Charlie’s Rum and The Chaplin “Ballad of Motherland” is the new chapter of the Indonesian Celtic punk history. The South East Asian scene is one of the most active scenes in the world. It’s not easy to release an album there, but little by little more bands are joining the ranks of the likes of The Working Class Symphony or The Cloves and The Tobacco.

The main instruments in the band’s sound are the fiddle, the banjo, the tin whistle and the accordion. The banjo is present all around the album and the fiddle is played with the special Indonesian style. The songs are sung either in Indonesian or in broken English, but the tunes are really addictive. Moreover, the choice of the numbers is quite interesting: an instrumental, a lot of self-penned songs and only one standard (“The Irish Rover”)

My selection: “Ballad of Motherland”, the instrumental that opens the album featuring banjo and tin whistle with early Blood or Whiskey reminiscences, “Pirate without a Ship” and “Surabaya Alive”, both of them are fast-paced numbers with a sound similar to that of The Cloves and The Tobacco, “Sukarnoisme”, another upbeat punk folk number with a Brutus’ Daughters twist, and “The Golden Age of Piracy”, a festive party song. “The Irish Rover” rendition is really tight and the last number of the CD, “Under the Revolution Flag”, shows a different side of the band, a guitar driven punk rock song without traditional instruments.